


Sandcastles

by TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Beaches, First Love, First Meetings, Fluff, M/M, No Dialogue, Summer Romance, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:48:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23524084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard/pseuds/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard
Summary: Love grows one grain of sand at a time.
Relationships: Han Jisung | Han/Lee Felix
Comments: 31
Kudos: 90





	Sandcastles

Jisung didn’t think he’d fall in love until he sat down on the beach.

He didn’t think he would like the beach at all but when he had the sand between his toes and up his swim trunks and he stared at the point where the blue blue ocean and the blue blue sky kissed, Jisung thought that maybe, just maybe, he could do this. He could do this.

Maybe, just maybe, he could live here now.

He had never seen the ocean before this. In pictures, yeah, but never in person. For the past seventeen years, he had lived in a rural mountain town. As to be expected, a town like that was completely different from the kind of life he had here beside all of this blue. He was used to hiding in long stretches of shade to stay out of the sun but, here, there was always a cool, damp wind gusting in from over the ocean. He was used to hearty foods like the ox-bone soup that had simmered on the stove a whole day but, here, the cuisine was light and never came in a bowl because everything was meant to be grilled and carried on a kabob. Back home, he’d walked those dirt paths barefoot but that didn’t compare to the hard grittiness of beach sand between his toes. The sand hid sharp bits like seashells or damp and slimy shreds of seaweed and he hated every bit of it in the beginning. But now it might be okay.

It would still take him forever to get used to the ghastly sensation of the tide sweeping wet sand out from beneath his heels... but now he couldn't hate it.

Because there was something beautiful about all of this. Something so soft and full of comfort that he couldn't stay pissed off, even when everything he knew and all of his friends were on the other side of the country.

The ocean and the sharp, salty smell that clung to the wind was what made Jisung believe that everything would be alright. That he could forget the bad things that had happened in the past and only think about the good things in his future that were now open to him.

There was something about the ocean that healed him. Warmed him. Something his hometown couldn't do.

Mountains could be big but the ocean was _large_. It took up the entire horizon. Just blue blue blue from the left over to the right. All of that water scared him at first. All of that noise and movement and power was overwhelming when he was so used to the mountains and their stillness and their quiet.

Jisung didn’t think he’d fall in love until he sat down on the beach.

He didn’t think there was anything in this world _to_ love until he dragged his fingers through the wet sand and left artwork behind. Silly things like drawings of suns and houses and cows. Things like hearts and words and his name. He would spend hours carving his secrets into the sand and then watched in delight as the ocean crept closer and closer before washing them all away. It was freeing, somehow. Like a diary. Except he was writing directly onto the pages of the earth and she helped him flip the page when he ran out of room.

Some days, he drew too high up on the sand for the ocean to reach so whatever he left there when he went back to the house for lunch would still be there the next morning.

When that happened, though, there was always something a little extra. Not just what he drew but something that someone else left behind. A fragment of their secret left among the fragments of his secrets. They were so small in the beginning, so subtle, that Jisung didn’t notice them at first.

An extra heart at the edge of his drawings. A smile in the face of his sun. A star above his name.

Tiny things that meant the world to someone.

A world he didn’t really think to look for as the days in his family's new house rolled into weeks.

Then the gifts became more and more obvious. He would draw a cartoonish face one morning and then go back the next day to see that someone had given the face seashells for teeth and seaweed strands for hair.

Jisung thought it was cute. Adorable, even. So he’d wreck it completely, smother it all with his hands and his feet. Flattening everything into mush and nothingness just so that he could wipe the canvas clean and start afresh.

He drew a boat one evening and woke up to see that, above it, someone had left him with a triangular sail crafted from sticks laid end to end.

Another day, he drew a dog and it had a cat friend the next time he walked down from his house to the sand.

They kept leaving each other things like that. Little presents. Little gifts. Little pieces of themselves. Secret currency that only they could exchange.

Short messages were given short replies. 

Are you a boy or girl? 

Boy. 

Me too.

How old are you? 

17.

Me too.

Names were traded.

Jisung. Felix. 

Whoever was on the other end was named Felix.

And now that Jisung had a friend, living here would be easier. And more fun.

The days wouldn’t pass as slowly.

He wouldn’t miss the mountain as much.

It wouldn’t hurt as bad to call this new place home.

Jisung had things to do in the afternoon, so he could never see who went to the beach then. He had piano practice to sit through and a little brother to pick up every weekday evening from summer camp. Then he helped his dad set the table for dinner. That's just how things were. But then he'd wake up the next day to a brand new drawing next to his and piano practice and all of that other stuff didn't matter. All day every day, he wondered who it was he shared such joy with. He went to bed and dreamed up what he wanted Felix to leave him in the morning. Then he’d wake up at dawn, shower and rush out of the house and down to the sand and whatever Felix gave him was always slightly better than what Jisung dreamed. Every day, he felt his heart speed up in anticipation as he rushed along the sidewalk and down the wooden staircase to the beach. Every day, he had a big grin on his face when he saw something new left behind. Something just for him.

A brand new star in the night sky he’d drawn. A school of fish in the little pond he’d made. A group of fluffy clouds for his airplane to fly through. And, one time, the open jaws of a shark beneath the swimmer he had drawn.

They were just _drawings_ but they felt like tiny slices of their own world. Paragraphs hidden in their own shared story. 

Jisung didn’t think he’d fall in love until he sat down on the beach.

Until he tucked his heels into the sand and stared at the gifts Felix had left for him.

On days when there wasn’t anything new, Jisung’s heart ached and he went the entire day worrying if something he had left behind had scared Felix away. If revealing some tiny little kaleidoscope shard of his heart had been the one thing to keep Felix from coming back.

But Felix always came back. Sometimes it would take a day. Other times it would take two or three or four but he'd always come back.

He’d write an apology in the sand. He’d draw a frown. He’d ask for forgiveness.

A time or two, Jisung saw hints of a longer message. The wind or the ocean rubbed the sharpness of the syllables down into illegible roundness overnight so Jisung could only guess at what the lines and lines of sentences were trying to tell him. But it wouldn’t really matter because, whether he could read the letters or not, he’d forgive Felix and things would go back to normal for a while.

That’s how he spent his summer. In days that passed like that.

Jisung wanted to know who Felix was and where he came from and how far down the beach he lived. Had he lived here all of his life or did he move here from somewhere else? Did he have annoying piano practice? Did he have a sibling who went to summer camp? Which house did he stay in? One of the smaller, brightly-painted shacks on the other side of the dune? Or in one of the bigger, boxy, modern mansions that sat on the cliffside on the end of the beach by the lighthouse? Jisung wanted to know what Felix’s favorite soda was. What his favorite color was. What his favorite season of Super Sentai was. He wanted to know where Felix went to buy his clothes and if he preferred his food spicy or sweet or sour. But most of those questions were too large to fit on the sand without the ocean reaching up and washing half of it away.

But that was okay, Jisung told himself, because the less he asked now, the more he could ask when they met. And the more he could ask later, the longer and longer and longer they could talk. And he wanted to talk to Felix for days and days. For weeks. Months. Years.

So he kept drawing.

On day forty-eight, he drew a flower in the sand and woke up on day forty-nine with a rose drawn next to it.

On day forty-nine, he drew a bird and on day fifty, it had a companion nuzzled against it.

Day fifty, he left half of a heart and then smiled with delight when, on day fifty-one, the missing half had been attached to it.

Day fifty-one, he shoved his hand into the sand, leaving behind an indentation. 

Jisung didn’t think he’d fall in love until he sat down on the beach.

Dawn rose on the fifty-second day, and Jisung saw that Felix’s handprint had been pressed into the sand on top of the print he’d left behind.

They had held hands. Or as close to it as they would get for a while. He now knew how small Felix’s hand was and he longed to be able to hold it in his own. On the day they met, they would hold hands for real and Jisung could not wait.

Jisung didn’t think he’d fall in love until he sat down on the beach.

He had brought a small shovel and a bucket with him so he made the first little building of a sandcastle. He was new to this and it crumbled the first four or five times but he eventually put _just enough_ water in the sand so that it would hold its shape without turning mushy and going everywhere. By lunchtime, he’d built a square, flat gatehouse.

When he woke up the next morning, the gatehouse stood between two castle turrets.

Jisung dug a moat in front of it.

Felix built the central castle with four skinny towers. One for each corner.

Jisung dug out a courtyard and used bits of seaweed as the bushes and trees.

Felix pressed seashells into the castle walls to serve as windows.

Jisung gently dug sticks into the towers of sand to act as flagpoles.

Felix added another building, blocky and a little crooked.

Jisung built a spire and a zig-zagging staircase up one of the gatehouse towers.

Felix added a defensive wall around the castle’s fragile perimeter.

Jisung spent all day building a bridge to connect the two main buildings.

Felix put a tiny little fountain in the courtyard out front.

Jisung and Felix built their sandcastle brick by brick. For days and days. And Jisung wanted to keep going until they had made something so large that it took up the whole beach. Until they had made something so strong that the tide couldn’t wash it away. Until they made something so big that they could live in it together and never have to be separated again. He dreamed. He dreamed. He dreamed.

But then a big storm came and the wind and the ocean worked together to tear their sandcastle down. Brick by brick.

There was nothing left of all the hard work they had put into it. There was no proof of the numerous days they had toiled on the turrets and parapets. Jisung hadn't even _thought_ of taking pictures! 

It was like the two of them had nothing at all.

Jisung cried about it. That’s how much it wrecked him. He was so heartbroken that he didn’t go down to the beach for a week. That was seven long mornings of never seeing any of the frantic, worried messages Felix left for him in the wet sand.

When Jisung couldn’t cry anymore, when he couldn’t keep laying in bed all day, he finally went down to the beach.

It had been so long so that he was sure Felix wouldn’t have left anything for him. And that would be okay, right? It would be okay if there wasn’t anything left for him.

No. It wouldn’t be okay. If there was nothing there, Jisung would cry for seven more days. He just knew it!

Every step, he steeled himself and came that little bit closer to accepting the fact that Felix wouldn’t leave him anything else. That they wouldn’t be able to share anything because Jisung had been a scaredy cat.

But...

There was someone there on the beach, he realized. Jisung was usually the only one out on this end of the beach in the mornings. There were too many sandy dunes and too many hills for the joggers to like this stretch of sand. There wasn’t enough flat land to sit out with chairs and umbrellas and coolers and radios so the tourists didn’t come this far south, either.

So who else could possibly be in Jisung’s secret place?

Wary, Jisung drew closer and closer until he could see that the figure was a boy his age.

And that the boy was building a sandcastle.

A sandcastle.

Right where their last one had been. Right where their last one had gotten washed away.

Jisung knew it was Felix. There was no one else it could be.

And Felix, just like all of the little presents he left behind, was better than Jisung dreamed.

His black hair waved in the wind and his smile was bright and his face was dotted with brilliant constellations of freckles that Jisung wanted to name and count.

And Felix worked so tirelessly on the sandcastle, his hands never stopping as they shaped buildings and towers and stairs. Hands that Jisung wanted to hold.

Felix toiled away, unaware that Jisung was but a few steps away from him, watching. Felix dug moats into the sand, piled everything all high to shape towers and spires, used his small fingers to carve out windows and doors.

Jisung wanted to build the sandcastle, too.

This wasn’t the kind of work that they should trade off, one in the mornings and one in the evenings. 

This was the kind of work they should do together.

Jisung didn’t think he’d fall in love until he sat down on the beach.

**Author's Note:**

> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/TheSwingbyJHF)


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